Peter Brock's Shelby Cobra Daytona
- Thread starter RALPHIE
- Start date
twobjshelbys
GT Owner
I see him and his car at Cars and Coffee almost every Saturday morning. It is so open and will chat about his car and all the things he's done. He almost always has a crowd of regulars and most of the people there don't even know who he is.
SteveA
GT Owner/B.O.D
Ralphie, big thank you.
I don't think most of today's car aficionados can understand how raw and basic the car design culture was in the racing world circa early 1960s. The Pete Brocks and Phil Remingtons of the world may have had the best schooling available, but most of what they were trying to design as far as automotive aerodynamics was in the witch doctor phase; wind tunnel testing was still very basic and the computer modeling for speed testing was in its infancy.
Here is a guy hired by GM at 19 (NINETEEN!) to work on the Corvette, and he pretty much designed the Daytona coupe by himself at 22. At around that age, I was still running between classes to a job at a Budweiser distributorship to help pay for college.
Brock alludes to the fact that Ford didn't embrace the Daytona @ LeMans until the (very original and untested) early Ford GTs crashed. The brass was happy to co opt the car once they knew they had a winner on their hands. Ironically, Brock put together a second version that went incomplete until decades later that would've been a 427 side oiler Daytona. I read an interview of his years ago saying he thought it would have been as fast as the MkII GT40s with much less of a cost. We'll never know.
How fitting that he becomes emotional speaking of the others acknowledging his work; this was his baby, but it took the others, including the aforementioned Phil Remington to get the project over the top. Still, what a humble, decent man.
When I think back to being a kid playing with my Aurora AFX HO models, (that included the Cobras and the earliest iterations of the GTs {oh, if I only kept that stuff!}), and listening to my older brothers celebrating the Ford wins while watching much of it on Wide World of Sports, it seems unbelievable that it was 50+ years ago.
Watch the vid and take it in guys. That's an automotive genius right there, and a quintessentially American one.
I don't think most of today's car aficionados can understand how raw and basic the car design culture was in the racing world circa early 1960s. The Pete Brocks and Phil Remingtons of the world may have had the best schooling available, but most of what they were trying to design as far as automotive aerodynamics was in the witch doctor phase; wind tunnel testing was still very basic and the computer modeling for speed testing was in its infancy.
Here is a guy hired by GM at 19 (NINETEEN!) to work on the Corvette, and he pretty much designed the Daytona coupe by himself at 22. At around that age, I was still running between classes to a job at a Budweiser distributorship to help pay for college.
Brock alludes to the fact that Ford didn't embrace the Daytona @ LeMans until the (very original and untested) early Ford GTs crashed. The brass was happy to co opt the car once they knew they had a winner on their hands. Ironically, Brock put together a second version that went incomplete until decades later that would've been a 427 side oiler Daytona. I read an interview of his years ago saying he thought it would have been as fast as the MkII GT40s with much less of a cost. We'll never know.
How fitting that he becomes emotional speaking of the others acknowledging his work; this was his baby, but it took the others, including the aforementioned Phil Remington to get the project over the top. Still, what a humble, decent man.
When I think back to being a kid playing with my Aurora AFX HO models, (that included the Cobras and the earliest iterations of the GTs {oh, if I only kept that stuff!}), and listening to my older brothers celebrating the Ford wins while watching much of it on Wide World of Sports, it seems unbelievable that it was 50+ years ago.
Watch the vid and take it in guys. That's an automotive genius right there, and a quintessentially American one.
SteveA
GT Owner/B.O.D
Phil's desk as it appears at Gurney's AAR today. The story goes about the note is Phil was a workaholic virtually never taking off a day. At the end of one day this note was found at his desk. Everyone thought it was so funny and so "Phil" they kept it for years later placing it on his empty desk after his passing.
RIP Phil.
RIP Phil.
Attachments
twobjshelbys
GT Owner
nautoncall
GT Owner
- Apr 6, 2014
- 1,093
Wow great viewing. Also, did y'all catch that the Cobra's were running 165 mph? Would anyone here dare try that?
twobjshelbys
GT Owner
I don't know how fast I got up to in my buddy's kit coupe but the other one (not me driving) was almost 160mph at WGI.
Certainly it's more stable and safer than a roadster.